


Sometimes Shit Happens (and It's Not Anybody's Fault, Okay)

by Tierfal



Series: Whippersnapper [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Crack, Fluff, Hilarity Ensues, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ed's intentions are infallible as he consistently cockblocks everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes Shit Happens (and It's Not Anybody's Fault, Okay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phindus](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Phindus).



> 1\. You know you're marrying the right guy when he sees the first line of this fic in the preview of an email to yourself and reads it aloud, and his only comment is "You're supposed to be working on your novel."
> 
> 2\. If you haven't already guessed that this is a big amalgamation of gorgeous Phindus headcanons and [gorgeous](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/64189807671/id-wach-out-if-i-were-you-roy) [Phindus](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/65778361194/sketchavember-2013-2-dont-you-just-hate-it) [art](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/66022457107/oh-boy-al-you-sure-know-how-to-pickem) and not-so-gorgeous Tierfal crack, you must be new around here – RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN. :D
> 
> 3\. I considered checking the "underage" warning, but then there's Al's first line. Heads up either way. XD
> 
> 4\. Special thanks to Eltea for a very kind and very sleep-deprived bit of Starcraft consultancy~ ♥

“The age of consent in this state is _sixteen_ ,” Al howls, “and you’re _not Mom_!”

Well, _that_ stings like a lemon-flavored bitch.

“He’s got a point,” Alfons says, patting down his pockets.  “Al, did you take my lighter again?”

“The jack-o-lantern was naked,” Al says.  He fishes in his coat and hands it back.

“Great,” Alfons says. “Klepto-pyro. Those are my two favorite prefixes.”

Al turns back to Ed and scowls darkly. “I had _two_ points, by the way.”

Jesus goddamn _Christ_.  (Ed should stop thinking that if he wants to preserve the off-chance of not going directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollars.)  Does _no one_ respect the elder brother’s sworn duty to protect his siblings to the point of arguable insanity?

“Age of consent, I will grant you,” Ed says.  “And no, I’m not Mom.  Because Mom is _gone_.  And that means I’ve got to fill in for her where I can, and _that_ means you are _not_ stalking any _thirty-year-old_ weirdos on _my_ watch.”

“I’m not stalking him,” Al says with that adorable ferocity that makes it (a) impossible to stay mad at him; and (b) impossible to take him seriously until it’s far too late.  “We’re… officially unofficial.”

Ed summons the height of his God-given eloquence: “What the shit does that mean?”

“I wish you would stop saying ‘what the shit’,” Alfons says, musing over his recovered lighter.  “It’s a faulty grammatical construction.  Language is degrading fast enough as is, without help from perfectly intellig—”

“It’s not degrading,” Al says.  “It’s _evolving_.”

Ed clears his throat as loudly as he can, which kind of hurts.  “What the _everloving motherfucking fuck_ does ‘officially unofficial’ mean?”

“It means he’s a gentleman,” Al says, with a terrifyingly blissful little smile.  “And he’s interested but respectful, and intends to abide by every last letter of the law.  I happen to think it’s _dashing_.”

“You would,” Ed says, scrubbing his left hand at his face, like maybe he can peel his skin off and become somebody else.  A dozen times, a thousand times, a _googolplex_ of times, he’s thought about making a bonfire out of the romance novels, but he’s never worked up the guts.  They’re the last thing Al has of Mom.  Even if it would be unequivocally good for the perfect little brat’s slightly dubious mental health, Ed can’t quite bear to deprive him of that.  “You know what’s not dashing, Alphonse Elric?  Grownups who flirt with the paperboy because they get off to the power and the danger and the way you swoon over ’em when they look your way.”

“It’s not flirting,” Al says.  “It’s courting.  He’s _classy_.”

“Here we go,” Alfons mutters.

“There’s nothing _classy_ ,” Ed says, “about hitting on my baby brother!”

“I’m not a baby!” Al shouts back, but hey, fuck the neighbors anyway; they complained about the cat.  “And I’m not stupid, and I can make my own decisions, and I can take care of myself, and if you’re so worried about me making a mistake, just _let me_ , or I’ll never learn how!”

That’s the crux of it, really. Their lives have been so fucked up from the get-go that Ed’s never been able to _handle_ watching Al—precious, perfect, gorgeous, only-good-thing-in-the-stupid-world Al—trip and fall and hurt himself. He would have mummified the kid in bubble wrap at the age of two for his _own safety_ if plastic wasn’t so suffocating and shit. He should’ve made a full-body cast out of craft foam or something. He should’ve put Al in a backpack and never let him out and carried him around forever like a backwards marsupial. He should have embedded a GPS device in that dumb red hoodie that’s practically welded itself to Al’s skin over the years.

They’ve been through _enough_ shit. In concept, Al’s probably right—you have to land flat on your face a couple times before you figure out the best way to get back up, and rare is the life devoid of trick stairs and trip wires—but the fact is that Ed would rather prostrate himself on a bed of coals than watch Al mess up and regret it.

The existentialism must be showing on his face, because the next thing he knows, Al’s hugging him tightly, face pressed in against his chest.

“I know you just want everything to be sunshine and rainbows for me,” Al says, “but I have to do this on my own.”

“Awful lot of rainbows around here,” Alfons says thoughtfully.

“Just for that,” Al says, “you’re _never_ finding that lighter again.” He looks up at Ed, eyes huge and sweet-caramel-brown and desperately imploring. “Let me take a couple steps on my own, Brother,” he says. “Please?”

So Ed does the only thing a rational, caring, mature older brother can do: he bucks up and lets it g…

Haha, just fuckin’ kidding.

He gets on his skateboard at five in the fucking morning and stalks his stalker brother all the way to the stalkee.

In the process, Ed decides that he should rule out a career as a private investigator once and for all, since he’s quickly discovering that he doesn’t have a knack for following people, skateboarding, carrying a baseball bat, and eating his breakfast at the same time.  Then again, even the most esteemed of private investigators probably couldn’t skateboard with a bowl of cereal in one hand and a bat in the other without doing a header, so there’s actually a possibility that he’s coming out ahead.

Fortunately, Al’s uncharacteristically unobservant as he swans along on the crappy old bike he fixed up and polished to a shine all by his lonesome—most likely as a result of the fact that he’s got headphones in, which Ed is going to have a _talk_ with him about later.  Much later.  Since he’s not supposed to be here, seeing this, and will have to find some way to ‘notice’ in a couple days.

What the heck does Al need musical accompaniment for, anyway?  The birds are singing, and the cars are honking, and Ed is crunching on Trix—it’s like a symphony for crazy people with bad habits.

He’s tense for the first mile, skating in the shadows, eyeing his reckless-but-still-perfect brother as Al flings papers onto lawns and driveways with a graceful finesse that would make the Queen of England jealous. What the hell is Al listening to, anyway? It’s probably the ‘Titanic’ soundtrack. Or… what do people who listen to music like? He could ask Alfons, but he’d just get the slowly-raising-eyebrow-while-looking-over-glasses-and-deep-persecuted-sigh thing.

Without warning, Al speeds up like a fucking cheetah—the bike is practically a blur, and his trademark sweatshirt is a red streak on the gray morning, and Ed has to book it to keep up. The bowl of Trix almost goes overboard, and _then_ he almost crashes into a tree, and _then_ …

He sees Al talking to the Guy.

It’s not even talking, really—it’s more than just _talking_ ; Al’s all animated and chattery; it’s more like he’s _glowing_ , but with sound. It’s like he’s overflowing. He just looks so… happy.

It’s not _natural_ to be happy before six in the morning. Under ordinary circumstances, that’s definitive proof of some serious voodoo shit.

With no small amount of effort, Ed manages to tear his eyes away from Al’s putting-puppies-to-shame grin in order to assess the Guy.

The Guy does not look quite as ancient and decrepit as he had feared, which is a plus. (Maybe it’s a plus. The jury is still out. The jury is out at a bar getting piss drunk and may not be back for a while and may not be reliable for a while longer.) The Guy is wearing a gray shirt and red plaid pajama pants and a bathrobe, and he looks kind of rumpled and tired and… delighted. He hands Al a steaming mug and leans an elbow on the mailbox while he nurses a second one, and Al hands him a newspaper, but he doesn’t even open it. He just stands there, smiling, responding sometimes, soaking in the stream of happy-Elric rambling. He just stands there and looks at Al like Al is something indescribably special.

There are a couple problems with this whole thing. The first is that Al should _not_ be drinking coffee—his wonderful little still-developing fifteen-year-old system is not prepared for the ravages of caffeine addiction, and nobody should be supplying him with that shit. Never mind that Ed discovered at fourteen and a half that the Magic Elixir of Life Energy was the only surefire way he could 1v1 with Koreans all night and still drag his ass through a school day; Al should _not_ be drinking _coffee_.

The second problem is that Ed’s starting to think Al might not be completely, one-hundred-percent wrong about the Guy being decent underneath it all. The Guy just seems bizarrely… un-creepy, is the thing. The only time he’s even come close to touching Al was when he handed the coffee cup across, and he’s somehow intently focused and attentive without the slightest hint of a _I’m going to lure you into my basement and tie you to the radiator and chop off your fingers_ leer.

Ed should probably be over the moon about the fact that this weirdo relationship-thing isn’t a threat to Al’s appendages and well-being and shit, but… well, hell, even if the Guy’s not a psycho-killer with an axe collection and a very specific thirst for underaged blood, he’s still _thirty_. That’s, like, a _million_ in real time.

Fortunately, there are few dilemmas that can’t be made slightly simpler with some time standing on a sidewalk, halfway behind a tree, nudging one’s skateboard with one foot, with a baseball bat tucked under one’s arm to free both hands for eating the last of the Trix and contemplating the scene of almost-cute romance unfolding across the street.

_Man_. Why does being a good brother have to be so _hard_?

A few more minutes drift away with Al beaming up at the Guy, and the Guy gazing back, and Ed sort of wanting to barf and also feeling sort of fuzzy inside, and then Al’s shoulders pop up and drop in that little sigh he has when he’s resigned himself to something. He gathers up the newspapers, gestures to the mug, carefully wedges it into his bike basket, and then leans in to kiss the Guy’s cheek.

Aw, _shit_.

The Guy goes bright pink, lifting one hand and spreading it on his face in a way that might be comical on someone Ed’s brother hadn’t just _come on to_.

Al, meanwhile, is tearing off down the street like the hounds of hell are at his heels and haven’t had their kibble.

Jesus. It’s time to man up and be the kind of big brother epic poems are written about.

He takes a deep breath, sets his bowl down on his board, rests the bat on his shoulder, and starts across the street towards the Guy.

The Guy spots him and instantly freezes like he’s been splashed with liquid nitrogen.  Then he sets his coffee mug carefully down on the mailbox, and then he starts, extremely slowly, to back away.

“Yo,” Ed says, trying his _hardest_ to sound friendly and harmless.  Sucks, though, that trying-too-hard-to-be-friendly-at-six-AM comes out pretty damn close to _batshit fucking crazy_ even to his own ears.  “Hey, dude, chill out, okay? What’s wrong with you?”

“Why don’t you set that down?” the Guy asks in a voice so damn _soothing_ it actually makes Ed’s steps falter.  “I’m very chill.  Let’s both be chill.  Let’s just talk, what do you say?”

“I can’t put it down,” Ed says, shaking the bat a little for emphasis.  The Guy looks sort of dazed and vaguely crushed, and there’s a deep hint of horror surfacing occasionally on his face.  Ed kind of feels bad.  “I mean, I _can’t_ —this hand gets sort of stuck when it’s cold.  My fingers won’t work.”

He realizes a bit too late that the weak gray light of kinda-dawn makes it completely impossible to distinguish fake skin from real skin, and his sleeves are pulled all the way down to his wrists against the cold, which means that anybody who doesn’t already know that his right arm is fake won’t have the slightest idea. Which means he looks even _batshittier_.

Well… oops.

It’s pretty funny, though, that it’s the _bat_ that’s making him look _batshit_. So at least that’s a plus.

  


magnificent art by [Phindus](http://phindus.tumblr.com), originally posted [here](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/66262359305/lets-just-leave-it-at-roy-should-start)   


“All right,” the Guy says, and his voice is seriously like melted butter over brie.  Is that part of why Al’s so completely obsessed with him? Jesus.  “Why don’t you stay right there, and we can talk about what you need?”

“I don’t need anything,” Ed says.  He should probably stop walking, if only so that the Guy stops backing up, but he just hit the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and it’s soaking wet with dew, and if he stands here, his shoes’ll get drenched.  “I just wanted you to know that that’s my brother.”

The Guy goes very, very still.  Then he takes another very, very slow step backwards.  “Is he.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, skirting a little bit of mud.  “Look, I’m not gonna—”

“ _Please_ stay right where you are,” the Guy says, backing away again.  “I can assure you I—”

“No, it’s cool,” Ed says.  “I’m serious; the bat is actually stuck in my hand.  I’m not gonna brain you or anything. I mean, I know I’m super fucking intimidating and badass and shit, but I’m really a pretty nice guy, so, and I just wanna talk about a couple thi—”

There’s a piece of wood in the grass behind the Guy.

“We can talk all you want,” the Guy says, holding his hands up palms out as he keeps up the retreat. “Let’s just… put the bat down, okay?”

The piece of wood is attached to a piece of metal.

“Hey,” Ed says, trying to point, which is sort of tough with a baseball bat stuck in your hand. “You might wanna be—”

“ _Don’t_!” the Guy says, startling—

“There’s a—” This time Ed just sort of gestures furiously with his elbow, right as the Guy’s heel hits the tines of the rake, and the Guy gets the point and starts to turn—

In perfect time to put his full weight on the tines and slam the rake handle directly into his own face.

“Sweet-holy-Jesus-son-of-a- _bitch_ -mother _fucker_!”

Well, if nothing else, Ed and the Guy have one thing in common—that is, a mouth so fucking filthy that sewage lines look palatable.

Ed’s brain, jolted into motion by the sudden surge of adrenaline, finally crests the mountain of a six-in-the-morning revelation, and he uses his left hand to pry the bat handle out of his right. He drops it to the grass and runs over to kneel by the Guy, who has collapsed to the wet lawn, pressed both hands over his face, and commenced wailing quietly.

“Shit,” Ed says. “Hey, um—can you get up? Do you have an icepack or something? That’s gonna swell like crazy if we don’t put something on it.”

“Leave me to die,” the Guy says.

“Okay,” Ed says. “Good. Don’t have to worry about you dating my brother.”

The Guy parts his fingers just enough to peek through them at Ed. “If I live, will there be enough of a possibility of me dating your brother for you to worry about?”

“I guess so,” Ed says, offering him the left hand. “But that’s a pretty big _if_.”

The Guy takes Ed’s hand, hauls himself upright, and brushes himself off. “Thank you,” he says. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Sure,” Ed says. “Let me go get my cereal. Do you have a steak in your freezer? I hear those are good for bruises.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” the Guy says. “I do know that I’ll be having words with whoever selected the community gardener. Do you take sugar?”

“Yeah,” Ed calls over his shoulder as he jogs across the street. “About a shit-ton, give or take.”

“Duly noted,” the Guy says.

And so it is that Ed has coffee with the creepy thirty-year-old that his precious baby brother was stalking, and it’s really not too bad.

…the encounter, that is. Although the coffee’s decent, too.

The Guy has a ton of photos stuck up on his fridge, secured by weird magnets from a nonsensical array of tourist destinations, plus ad ones from a local plumber and several pizza places. Ed stares at the prints through the gentle haze of his coffee steam, absently amused at the giant guy who keeps hugging the life out of people, and the tiny guy in glasses who keeps ending up underfoot, and the beautiful blonde woman who outright _refuses_ to smile when she can see the camera. There are a couple good ones of the Guy pulling faces, playing with a little black-and-white dog, and striving to get a rise out of the blonde lady, and there’s one Polaroid of a dark-haired stubbly dude in glasses with his camera raised. At the very bottom, there’s a very crisp new photograph of… Al. Standing on the lawn, hands shoved into the pocket of his sweatshirt, shoulders raised shyly, beaming like a sun.

Ed looks back up at the other pictures, because it’s kind of shitty trying to come to terms with somebody _else_ making Al happy like that.

Wait a second.

_Wait_ a _second_.

“Hang on,” Ed says, taking in the details for the first time. “You’re a fucking _cop_?”

The Guy blinks, at least with the eye not covered by a big blue ice-thing that was unearthed from the freezer. “I… am, yes.”

Well, that explains… a hell of a lot. Pretty much everything, really.

“Oh,” Ed says. “Okay, then.”

“I’m afraid I’m also about to be late,” the Guy says. “May I offer you a rain check on our heart-to-heart?”

“You’re really fucking weird,” Ed says, bolting down the last of the coffee as he stands. “No wonder he likes you.”

The Guy looks simultaneously sort of pained and sort of pleased, and he’d be _epic_ in one of those stupid romance novels, and Ed thinks that his chances of nipping this shit in the bud just went from ten percent to zero.

_Damn it_.

 

 

“ _Holy_ crap on a cupcake,” Hughes says.  “What the heck happened to you?”

“Stepped on a rake,” Roy says, which is, for the record, completely honest.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Hughes says.  “My favorite part of this is how Riza doesn’t even blink anymore.”

Riza shrugs and hands him a manila folder.  “Maria is going to ask for this in five minutes.”

“Thank you,” Hughes says.  “Jeez, Roy, I think you actually _broke_ her capacity for surprise.”

“It’s plausible,” Roy says.  His Inbox appears to be a fine and varied collection of crap, junk, trivialities, and bullshit.  “You may recall that the first time we tried to throw her a surprise birthday party—”

“We couldn’t get past the padlocks,” Hughes muses.

“And the second time,” Roy says, “when we resorted to staging it in the breakroom—”

“She almost shot us all,” Hughes says, voice warm with nostalgia, because he’s a _loony_.  “And then we had pie.”

“I would have spared the pie,” Riza says.  “I don’t _like_ parties.”

“So in addition to ruining her for surprise,” Hughes says, “you’ve excised her ability to have fun.  Roy Mustang, you are a marvel of a man.”

“Thank you,” Roy says.

“It’s not his fault about the fun,” Riza says.  “I was born without an ability to have fun.  Congenital defect.  The doctors were distraught, and my parents were relieved.”

“What an unspeakable tragedy,” Hughes says.  “But the really weird thing is, _Roy_ , that even though you’ve got a shiner worthy of a cage-fighter and _skipped my precious shower_ written all over you, you still look pleased as punch.”

“He’s in love,” Riza says.

“I am no such thing,” Roy says.

“You know,” Hughes says thoughtfully, “you _may_ be the most hilariously bad liar I’ve ever met—including all those kids from that loud party last weekend who were high out of their _minds_.”

“You can be extraordinarily cruel when you put your mind to it,” Roy says.

“Don’t try to distract me with petty insults,” Hughes says.  “We’ve _had_ this discussion, Roy.  You’re not allowed to fall in love.”

“You’re testifying at the Hitchens trial next week,” Riza says, “and the hit-and-run trial is the week after that.  You don’t have _time_.”

“Well, it’s too late,” Roy says.  “Pencil it in.”  He spins his chair around to consult the wall calendar.  “How about if I’m in love from four to seven on Thursdays?”

“I just booked us time at the firing range on Thursdays at six,” Riza says.

“Oh, the _humanity_ ,” Hughes says.  “Who’s the lucky little rosebud?”

“Not telling,” Roy says.

“C’mon,” Hughes says.  “I need a name so I can run her through the system and see if she has any priors.”

“I will die first,” Roy says.

“That’s a bit extreme,” Hughes says.  “Is she a felon?  Oh, God, Roy, _tell_ me she’s not a prison pen-pal.  _Tell me you’re not in love with a convict_.”

“I’m not in love with a convict,” Roy says.

“I should replace the polygraph,” Hughes says.  “If she’s not a convict, why are you so… oh.”  The glasses make it so that every time Hughes’s eyes widen, they look _massive_.  Roy has wondered more than once if Hughes picked them out specifically for that feature.  “Not a she.”

Roy leans back in his chair until it creaks.  “I hate you.”

“For my laser-like insight and scathing wit?” Hughes asks.  “Shame on you.  At least hate me for something valid, like my borderline-compulsive habit of prying into your personal life.”

“I hate you for all of it equally,” Roy says.

“When you need a break,” Riza says, laying several files on his desk blotter, “feel free to hate your job for a while instead.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion,” Roy says.

“Does your secret paramour know you lost into a fight with a garden tool?” Hughes asks, fanning himself with his own file.

“That’s none of your damn business,” Roy says. Al will soon, though—he always stops by to return the coffee mug and waxes poetic about his gratitude, and he peeks up through his eyelashes and gives this sweet, nefarious little smile that’s like honey with just a _touch_ of jalapeño.

“While we’re on the subject of business,” Riza says, and slaps another folder down.

“Good morning!” Maria says, sweeping in. She grins at Riza, nods to Roy, and turns to Hughes. “Sir, I was wondering—do you think you could help me find the report on—”

Hughes raises the file in his hand and summons his most mysterious grin.

Maria pauses, takes it, opens it, and stares. “How did you _know_?”

“I didn’t,” Hughes says contentedly. “This one’s all Riza. By the way, I think she wants to buy you a drink. How’s Friday?”

Maria’s cheeks go crimson. “Um. Friday’s. Great.”

“Perfect,” Hughes says. He makes a full 360 on the chair and then winks at Roy and Riza. “I’m not as think as you dumb I am.”

Riza clears her throat. “I never doubted that,” she says.

 

 

Al was not aware until tonight that it was physically possible to _tremble_ with rage. It sounds like the sort of thing that would happen exclusively in overwrought prose, but his hands are shaking, and his vision is unsteady, and he doesn’t think his heart has produced two regular beats in a row since he knocked on Roy’s door.

If he’s not mistaken, this is the part of the melodramatic novel where bloody vengeance gets rained down on the perpetrator of evil. Even through the quaking of his every atom, Al isn’t sure that he’s happy about that. He loves Ed. He has always loved Ed. He will love Ed long after the sun flares out and the planet is a smoldering scrap of rock.

He just loves Ed substantially less right now, and kind of wants to kick Ed’s sorry ass into next week.

Al lifts his quavering hand, turns his quavering key, and opens the door.  He steps through it.  He pockets his key again, wishing the jingle of his little toy kitty keychain wasn’t so incongruously cheerful.  He closes the door behind him.

“Edward,” he says.

Ed, who was sprawled out on his stomach on the couch, laptop open, Pumpkin curled up on the small of his back, looks up like a man who’s climbed to the gallows and seen his own ghost.

_Good_.

“I stopped by Roy’s place on my way back from tutoring,” Al says.  He fancies he can almost hear frost crackling on the windows as his words travel through the room.  “Is there any chance you might already know what I saw?”

“Al,” Ed says desperately, “you gotta hear me out—”

“I don’t, actually,” Al says.  “I don’t have to do _anything_ you say.  I don’t have to stay away from him.  I don’t have to listen to your rants.  I don’t even have to take out my headphones when I’m riding my bike _if I don’t want to_.  You don’t own me, Brother.  And to go out and _attack_ my officially-unofficial boyfriend at some psychotic zenith in your grand delusion that I’m yours to protect and yours to _control_ —”

“I didn’t touch him!” Ed says.

“You baseball bat was _in his kitchen_!” Al says.

“Because I dropped it on the lawn when I ran to his aide when he stepped on a rake and hit himself in the face and I thought he’d _died_!” Ed says. “And then he made me coffee and was generally kind of cool, for an ancient relic who apparently collects pictures of his weird friends.”

Al shuts his mouth on a shrill retort along the lines of _That’s a completely ridiculous story even if it does corroborate what he said, and how_ dare _you saddle a perfectly innocent leaf-corralling implement with your shame!_

“Kind of—what?” he asks.

Ed shrugs. Pumpkin makes a very aggravated face (Al can tell) and repositions herself, kneading Ed’s back as she goes. “I dunno. I guess if you’re dead-set on the idea of having a million-year-old guy, he’s not the worst one you could’ve picked. And since he’s a cop and all, I know he’s not going to try any funny shit. Not that that _means_ he’ll treat you right, or anything, and if he _doesn’t_ , the bat’s comin’ back out sooner than you can say ‘But he looks good in the uniform’, but… I dunno. He seemed all right.”

Al mustn’t cry. He needs to be very dignified and grown-up all the time so that everyone will realize that he’s a good match for Roy, because Roy is mature and confident and established and _perfect_. Al can’t just burst into tears at the drop of a hat, even if the figurative hat in question is his extremely beloved and extremely oblivious brother finally, _finally_ understanding something of others’ emotions without needing an explanation to be bludgeoned slowly through his skull.

Oh, what the hell. Winry’s going to cry, too, when she hears.

“Holy shit!” Ed says bewilderedly. “What’s—”

“D-d-don’t get u-up!” Al says, waving both hands and then recruiting one to rub his nose. “P-P-P-Pumpk—”

It’s too late: Ed jumps to his feet, the cat latches onto his skin, and the rest is rather predictable, really.

Once Ed has been doused in hydrogen peroxide and thoroughly bandaged, Pumpkin has been coaxed out from under the bed and petted for several minutes, and order has generally been restored, Al gets to work composing another apology note for the neighbors. At the rate they’re going, he should probably start mass-producing these things.

 

 

Miles is a simple man who takes great pleasure in simple things. For instance, six-minute guitar solos, or the peculiar way that neon light seems to dance like a burst of fiber-optics in Alfons’s hair.

To be honest, everything about Alfons is kind of enthralling. Miles doesn’t entirely understand it himself; there’s something about the way Alfons interacts with the entire world—something about how quiet and focused he can be, and then how _manic_ and confused; something about how his off-the-charts smartness makes him scared. Miles can’t figure out what he’s scared of. Miles can’t figure out why he always seems to believe, genuinely, with a deep and pervasive sort of disappointment, that he’s a waste of space on the planet Earth. Miles can’t figure out how someone so brilliant and sweet and clever and cute and interesting and nerdy can _possibly_ find himself insufficient.

But that’s the thing that’s so addictive about it. Miles wants to _change_ that. Miles wants Alfons to see himself the way Miles does—the way _everybody_ does. Miles wants to light a thousand candles in him and watch him glow. Miles wants him to be so happy he almost falls apart.

It’s all kind of unnerving, because Miles has never in his _life_ wanted to nurture someone before.

Worse than that, he’s never cared about somebody more than he cares about himself. If Alfons kicked his ass to the curb tomorrow, Miles would let him go and wish him well and fervently hope that he found someone who lit the candles right this time.

Olivier keeps mentioning, with _significance_ , that Miles hasn’t written any music for them in a while. He’s not sure how to tell her that he can’t think of anything not-completely-stupid that rhymes with “Alfons”, and that there’s one song playing nonstop in his head—which basically goes _I love you; I love you; I love you; I’m totally fucked_.

Alfons tucks his crappy little car into a parking spot along the curb by his apartment. His hand lingers on the gearshift for a moment—he’s got really gorgeous fingers; they’re all long and graceful and… multi-talented. He’s looking out the window, up towards the lights that are on upstairs.

“I don’t mind taking the fire escape up again,” Miles says. “It’s scenic.”

“It’s not that,” Alfons says. He bites his lip. Miles’s pulse spikes crazily. “I just… don’t… want to share you with other people yet. Is that—God, that sounds all _wrong_.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Miles says. “It sounds really damn sexy.”

Alfons flushes, looking at him sideways and starting to grin. By all rights, he should look washed out and tired under the harsh fluorescent street lamp, but he’s just so… wonderful. “Me being antisocial and possessive is sexy?”

Miles ditches his seatbelt and leans across the console to thread a couple fingers in his hair. “You _wanting_ me is. It always is.”

“That’s terrible logic,” Alfons says, blushing harder. “I want you all the time.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Miles says.

“It’s not exactly helpful,” Alfons says, laying a hand over his, eyes slipping halfway closed, smile widening, “when I’m trying to take somebody’s insanely customized curry order, and all I can think about is the way you hold a cigarette, and the way your voice is kind of scratchy first thing in the morning, and that one pair of jeans you have with the heart-shaped hole in the knee, and—”

Faced with the dilemma of genuinely wanting to hear more of a gut-wrenchingly adorable list and desperately needing to kiss his boyfriend, Miles gives in to the latter.

“Mmm,” he says for good measure. “Can’t we take this upstairs?”

“Not without getting the third degree,” Alfons says. “Ed wants you to bring cupcakes.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Miles says.

“But you _shouldn’t_ ,” Alfons says, “because this isn’t _about_ Ed, and who cares what the hell he thinks, anyway?  He plays video games for a living.”

Momentarily shaken from his Alfons-centric reverie, Miles blinks.  “How…?”

“He’s an internationally-ranked StarCraft player,” Alfons says.  “He gets corporate sponsorship—no, I’m serious!  People pay him money to wear their logos when he goes to tournaments sometimes.  They especially love him ’cause he gets crazy-good APM even though his right hand is plastic and all.  The interviewers always ask him about overcoming adversity, and he’ll just look them in the eyes and go totally deadpan and say ‘What’s adversity’s win percentage versus Zerg?  I’d spam banelings.’”

“To be fair,” Miles says slowly, “that is _pretty_ badass.”

Alfons shrugs.

And that kind of _does_ it, weirdly enough—the way his shoulders tilt, the way his head cocks just a little to the side, the way the light gleams on his glasses. Miles just _needs him_. He curls his fist into Alfons’s shirt collar and drags him in to kiss him.

Whatever else can be said of Miles—longtime slacker, eternal underachiever, waster of socially-acceptable talents, proponent of music that makes the eardrums bleed—he is a _fine damn kisser_. You can ask anyone who’s had a taste.

And he’s glad about that, because he wants it to be a bolded heading on the long list of things to give to Alfons, another item on the tally of offerings available to him if he’ll only just _stay_.

Alfons makes a soft whimpering sound and presses his tongue against Miles’s, fumbling to release the catch of his seatbelt; Miles twists his fingers gently into Alfons’s hair just behind his ear and wraps the other hand around his hipbone. He wants to ask, but he never wants to ask too _much_. The day he’s an obligation is the day it dies, and the rest is just a slow, slow, agonizing wake. On days he’s being honest, he realizes that he doesn’t want to go through that again—ever. And not with Alfons, either; not with the sharp-boned, warm-breathed, writhing, softly-laughing miracle climbing into his lap and slipping both arms around his neck. He never wants to have to tear Alfons out of his life. He doesn’t even like to imagine what the contours would look like without pale blond hair and shirts with funky patterns that somehow work on that frame and a shy but unrepentant set of fingers knitting in with his.

And maybe it’s too late anyway. Maybe Alfons has spread out and seeped in. Maybe there wouldn’t _be_ a way to remove him without killing them both.

Alfons straddles his lap, knees cinching in tight, hips sliding forward, and it’s all Miles can do not to let his brain explode inside his skull and dribble out his ears like oatmeal.

“Little tight,” Alfons pants against Miles’s mouth, shifting to the right, to the left, further forward— _ohJesus_ — “But at least Ed isn’t going to have his ear to the door, and Al won’t give us knowing looks and cover the cat’s eyes when I walk by.”

“You live with a bunch of smartasses,” Miles says.  It’s the most coherent thing he can come up with while his devastatingly attractive boyfriend is grinding on his crotch.  “Here, lemme—”

He manages to unstick one hand from Alfons’s magnificently grope-able ass and pats it down along the side of the seat, searching for the lever.  He finds it right as Alfons ducks in and nips his earlobe, and he instinctively yanks on it, which makes the seatback drop instantly, which jars Alfons even harder against Miles’s groin, which makes him see entire universes of stars.

When the supernovas clear from the backs of his eyelids, Alfons is settling in his lap and giving him an impish grin.

Miles has always felt, strongly, that it’s better to live a life society disdains—to register the weight of the world’s contempt, day in and day out—and to _enjoy_ every minute of it than it is to waste a second being miserable going about an existence that other people find acceptable. Fuck other people. People are animals that believe what they’re told and ostracize the already-weakened and slaughter each other and lie and cheat and steal. People suck. People don’t have a goddamn clue what’s right for any individual soul, and Miles isn’t about to let them tell him what his place in the world ought to look like. They’re _wrong_.

Over time, he’s gotten into the habit of ignoring that faint, reedy, simpering voice of Civilization in the back of his head. Civilization thought he should stay in NYC in a stiff suit and a strangling tie and shoes that rubbed his toes raw, selling stocks and trading bonds and moving hoards of money for pompous assholes who could afford to lose a fortune. Civilization thought he should choose a picket-fenced-in yard and marry somebody and pretend to care about the color of the curtains. Civilization thought he should put his guitar into long-term storage and act like a _grownup_ , please, Solomon.

Civilization started to get louder over time. Civilization got to shouting in his ear, screaming at him while he’d lie in bed every night, watching the red lines of light on the alarm clock flare and blur into nonsense. Civilization was burying him in the folds of a laundry list of impossible expectations. And he could tell that the strain was going to kill him before he ever checked any of the boxes.

One morning he woke up to snow on the windowsill and silence in his head—except for a clear, ringing sentence in his _own_ voice.

His voice was saying _Fuck that noise—make your own_.

He’d never really thought about it before. He’d never really looked his boring-ass, stupidly conventional, scheduled-to-shit life in the face and considered that he was fully capable of turning on his heel and walking away.

The more he thought about it, the more he _had_ to think about it, and the more sense it made until there wasn’t any _other_ choice.

He learned the lesson, though, for what that was worth. He hasn’t followed the stock market in six years, because he follows three things—the music charts, his gut instinct, and his stupid heart. The last one gets him into a hell of a lot of trouble, but there isn’t much that he regrets.

Alfons nudges their foreheads together and runs a thumb down over his cheek. “Hey,” he whispers. “You okay?”

“So much better than okay,” Miles says. “So fucking _good_.”

Maybe that’s part of why Alfons looks so wrecked and terrified half the time—he’s just starting to hear the noise full-blast.

That’s all right. Everybody has to hear it so they can know what they’re running from. And Miles is going to buy him a pair of Doc Martens and take his hand and lead him out of the valley of the shadow of a mediocre life.

“Babe,” Miles says, and the way Alfons’s eyes light up, and the corners of his lips curl makes Miles’s heart squeeze. “You’re… fantastic. You know that? You blow my mind.”

Alfons flattens his hands on Miles’s chest and looks down at them, biting his lip and blushing furiously some more.

“Why stop with your mind?” he asks.

Jesus. Being in love is like paragliding over an active volcano.

And Miles wouldn’t trade it for the whole fucking world.

“Good damn point,” he says, wriggling to make his hips roll up against Alfons’s, earning a sharp, delighted gasp for his pains. “Why stop _ever_?”

Alfons laughs like it’s just another bit of banter, but Miles is pretty serious, and one of these days he’ll tell him so.

“Let’s not,” Alfons says, dragging his damp mouth down along Miles’s jaw. “Let’s just… not.”

Maybe it’s a little traitorous, coming from a musician, but sometimes Miles thinks poetry can go fuck itself, and eloquence is for people whose feelings aren’t real enough to convey themselves without the frills.

Miles figures he can let his primal organs express some affection now.

It’s a slightly savage scramble after that—Miles’s whole body is throbbing, thrumming, heating, _hungering_ —his unsteady fingers pry the buttons of Alfons’s shirt loose one by one, and he _wishes_ he could move faster, wishes time was fluid, wishes all of this _stuff_ didn’t have to get in the way—

He just wants their essences to mingle; is that too much to ask? He just wants flesh and heart and skin and soul at once, converging, combined. He just wants everything. What can it hurt to try?

He pushes the open shirt from Alfons’s shoulders; his muse twists that beautiful back and tilts his shoulders, shaking and tugging to free the fabric from around his wrists. It is utterly awkward and absolutely stunning. Alfons is good at that.

Miles thinks—as much as it is possible to _think_ while kissing down along collarbones, trailing his fingers over the topography of the ribcage that guards the lungs, the heart—that he is never going to be his own again. He will always belong to _this_ —this moment and all the others like it; to the thrill, the wonder, the ecstasy so vast and endless that he starts to fear he’ll suffocate. There is no turning back from here. There will be no forgetting of this; there will be no retracing of his steps. Every second of his future will stand in comparison to this. Alfons, loving Alfons, _having_ him—this is the pinnacle. This is the standard. This defines the rest of his strange excuse for a life.

The shirt slithers over his knees on its way to its final resting place on the floor, partly draped over his left foot. Alfons looks embarrassed and excited and completely fucking radiant, and Miles takes a second to grip his hipbones and squeeze, just to be sure that he’s _real_ , before finally succumbing to the inevitable.

The fly of Alfons’s jeans is no match for Miles’s horniness, although it’s aided in its quest to foil him by the fact that Miles’s hands still won’t quite cooperate. It probably has something to do with the way his heart is pounding, and Alfons’s fingernails are skating down his chest, and he’s arching up to kiss at Alfons’s throat and _feeling_ the helpless laughter, and the vibration of it ripples right through him.

  


more amazing art by [Phindus](http://phindus.tumblr.com), originally posted [here](http://phindus.tumblr.com/post/65184474800/this-is-what-happens-when-i-read-this-perfection)   


If he’s getting straight-up clumsy in his desperation, Alfons either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind. Alfons is pretty preoccupied, in any case, with hiking Miles’s T-shirt up his chest, and in a second he’ll have to shift to get it off, but right this minute no power in a pantheon could pry his hands from Alfons’s waist. The windows of the car are fogging up in a hurry, and his jeans were pretty tight when he put them on this morning, but at this point they’re a _torture_ device. Fuck clothes anyway; who needs that shit? Alfons certainly doesn’t. Miles is about to prove it—it’s gorgeous and terrible, teasing himself like this, straining upward to lick and nip and nuzzle at any part of Alfons’s face and neck that he can reach, and then Alfons’ll lock eyes with him, and his whole circulatory system just stutters to a stop— 

“Babe,” he says, and it’s hard to tell whether Alfons’s cheeks warm up a little more, or it’s just the ambient heat of the two of them so _close_ to paradise. “You sure?”

Because that’s one of the things that’s so precious, actually—ordinarily Alfons is skittish about PDA and paranoid about getting caught out doing _anything_ questionable, and if he’s on the fence, Miles doesn’t want to push him over; that’s not fair. He’s perfect how he is. He doesn’t need to ease up; he doesn’t need to change; he doesn’t need to…

All right, he really _does_ need to grind down slowly, slowly, _filthily_ on Miles, digging his fingernails into Miles’s shoulders and leaning in to breathe hoarsely into his ear, just two little words—

“Fuck, yes.”

“Okay, then,” Miles says.

That is the unmourned end of Miles’s shirt, and he’s hauling Alfons’s pants down when there’s a knock on the window.

They both stop breathing for a long, long, probably unhealthy moment.

“Hey,” says the voice of the elder of Alfons’s cousins. “I’m just gonna assume you’ve been having a really long, soul-searching conversation that involves a lot of condensation from your breath and stuff, ’cause… yeah. Anyway, there’s a shit-ton of pizza and some pie upstairs, because Al told me I had to get some, or he’d never forgive me for offending his officially-unofficial officer. Try saying _that_ ten times fast.”

Miles is sorely tempted. Presumably the insanity is a direct result of the fact that very little blood has flowed in an upward direction in his body in a quarter of an hour, exacerbated by the way he’s been breathing in Alfons’s exhalations. That can’t be salubrious either.

“Figured you might wanna know,” Ed says. “And since there’s pie, Band Dude can even be off the hook for cupcakes, just this once.”

Miles clears his throat to comment that that’s rather generous, but Alfons claps a hand over his mouth before he can formulate any words.

There is silence from outside the window for a moment.

“Uh,” Ed says. “Right. So… free food. That’s all. As you were.”

Footsteps crunch faintly on the pavement, and then a door closes somewhere off in the distance.

“I hate everything,” Alfons says.

Miles smoothes both hands slowly up his back, then down again. “No, you don’t.”

Alfons shivers, shimmies, grins. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

“Where were we?” Miles asks.

“Mmm…” Alfons loops both arms around his neck again, pressing their foreheads together. “Right about here.”

“Perfect,” Miles says.

And it’s pretty damn close.


End file.
